In deploying vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles, such as helicopters and tilt-rotor aircraft, near land masses, large aircraft carriers with stable landing platforms may be used. The use of an aircraft carrier can be expensive. Floating landing platforms (e.g., converted oil drilling platforms) may also be used; however, such floating landing platforms can expensive to build and slow to deploy. A temporary structure erected near a land mass can be expensive and time consuming.
The following scenario is described in the context of a military operation; however, similar scenarios are applicable in nonmilitary applications, where deployment of such VTOL aircraft may also be employed (e.g., oil exploration). In a military scenario, battle operations call for light, rapidly deployable, maneuver forces supported by remote munitions. Such maneuver forces rely on intermediate staging bases (i.e., landing and take off platforms) for VTOL vehicles, in or near the theater of operations to support troops, logistics, and combat fire support. A deployable sea base represents maneuverable capability to rapidly provide offensive and defensive power, as well as assembling, equipping, supporting and sustaining scalable forcible entry operations without the need for land bases in the joint area of operations. As discussed above, the use of large aircraft carriers, temporary platforms, and other solutions have proven to be costly and sometimes time consuming. Therefore, there is a need to provide a cost effective, highly deployable solution to providing staging areas (i.e., platforms) for VTOL vehicles.
Although desirable results have been achieved using prior art systems and methods, novel systems and methods that mitigate the above-noted undesirable characteristics would have utility.